Looking at other Bands Poster

Before we started on our poster for our band I looked into what other bands have created to promote their CD being realised. I found a few images that could help with us creating the right poster for our CD. The poster normally has the same image as the CD has on it but with different information. The poster normally shows; the artists name, what the CD is called and when it is out. Extra things would be websites of the band, where you can buy the CD and possibly when the band is next touring.



second draft of digipak

These are some more photos I took and then edited to help us decided what idea we were going for with our digipak front cover.

We ended up deciding on using an image of a tree to put as our frount cover of our digipak, as we could edit the image to a style that we felt represented the satr image of the band.

First drafts of Digipak

Colabrating all the ideas that we came up with for this distored image we found an image that colabrated all these ideas on google images. We will now go and take our of picture and create this similer idea and concept to help us produce our front cover of our Digipak. These are just ideas to help us.

We decided on the name of 'Dawin in Eden' after we decided to create this confussing image of the band, we had to decided on an album name but we haven't quite decided wether or not 'ignorance' gives the same message as the band name and cover gave off. It needs to also connect to this concept of a distored image.

We are trying all different desighns, from people to nature to trees:

Digipak - Ideas

 Our idea for our music video developed from a skins video from YouTube, they used distorted images to show what her life is like in Skins. So we asked ourselves the question that the people who edited the video would have looked into, 'How does it feel for someone who has lost everything?'. Looking into this concept of losting everything we got the idea from both our music video and the Skins video that we are trying to capture this blurred world and images that are surrounding both our characters in our music video and Effy from skins. They  both use distorted and shattered images to create this world that they are living in.

So for our Digipak we looked on google images for some ideas of blurred images, we came across blurred lights and blurred figures that create what we wanted to capture. This lost, confused and broken look through someones point of view. So we will take away this idea of distorted images and create something using lights,shadows and people that will make a confusing front cover to our Digipak.

Digipak and Advertisement

On Campuse Perfomace - Shoot

Monday 8th November, the day of our Music video shoots. We started off on campus in the studio, starting with our performance element. We had three man band Charlie, Oscar and Freddie who listened and cooperated very well with what we chucked at them. At 9 we started setting up the camera and putting the band in place to get them rehearsing. As we were setting up the camera and making sure everything was ready to start shooting, but as we were just about to start band practice, Freddie our basest of the band had to be taken out to do a November assessment which he wouldn’t be done until 10 which meant pushing back our performance shoot till then. Which didn’t really matter as it meant we got the chance to properly rehearse the other two members.

 
At 10 we got started straight away with a wide shot of the whole band, Due to our set and the way our lighting is set up we decided it would look more effective with the bigger camera that was slightly more technical but after getting the hang of it we felt that it would give us a great outcome.

                                    

                                     

So far we were getting all the shots that we wanted and decided for our final few shots on performace that we  would use tracking to pan round the band to capture different angles and try something different to try and get more interseting shoots to add to what we had produced all from the morning shoot. We layed out the track and had the chance to sit on a chair and cotrol what we wanted the camera to do by follwoing the bands movement.

After we were happy we got all the shots we wanted of the band we did a last check that we got all the shoots we wanted, by going through the list of shots we wrote down. We finally finshed shoot the perfomace at 12.30. We were ready to set off for our location set in guildford and shoot the narritive.

Guildford car park - Shoot

After spending the morning shoot the band shoots we needed, we moved too our location shoot at about 5pm. We packed up the bus with all the equipment we needed camera, tripod, paramedic uniform, fake blood and all the cast members. It took us about half an hour to get there but didn’t start shooting until 6. We had a few problems with getting one of our cast members their as he had to drive in his car so that we could use it in the shoot and the directions weren’t very clear but he finally arrived and was ready to start shooting.

          

We used the smaller camera this time as the other camera was better for our performance shots. The majority of our shots were done in slow motion so that we could capture the drama and reactions of the event that was unfolding I feel this worked very well as it captured what we really wanted which was the emotions of the shots.

Our cast was made up of 5 people and we asked a few other people to step in when were there. Connor and Pete were the main characters with Rose and Henry as on lookers at the last minute I had to step in with Henry so we could act together. Charlie who was our fifth person actually wasn’t need in the end due to the way things were shot in the end. Phil who is a teacher at school acted in the video as well to give us a different age range between the main characters and the extras. These worked well and give us a great contrast.   

Not only did we use the normal camera but we also used a smaller camera that could be put on top of the car to try and get the effect of a paramedic coming into the scene. It was too expensive to higher out a real ambulance so we used a teachers car and put a blue flashing light on top of the car to try and capture this idea with out actually showing the car. The camera got some good shots of the car coming in at speed and creating a panicked atmosphere.   

Music Video - Setting up and Shoot day

As a group we decided a good way of showing how we set up and decided what the set would look like would be a video diary, so as we set up and got ready for shoot day we used a camera and our phone to record and take pictures of our video set. We enjoyed doing this as it was a different way of recording the events that happened and its more interesting then just simply putting photos up.

The video shows all the different things that had to be done before the day of the shoot to make sure everything ran smoothly. We first of all cleared out everything from the last shoot and took down all the lights so we could have a blank canvas to start over again. We then decided what position our lights should be in so that we got the setting we wanted. Once the lights were up and checked we started to move in all the instruments and put them in place ready for the band members on Monday. We were then ready to shoot what shots we wanted of our performace side to our music video.

As Imii struggled to put it up on blogger straight from her computer, me and her decided that if I created a YouTube account We could put it on to YouTube and then upload it on to our blogs. This was a lot easier as it didn't take long to set up an account and it also means we can share our experiences with other people on YouTube.

Band practice

To get ready for our shoot day we decided on do a badn practice to make sure everyone was clear on what part of the band they will be playing and that they new the chords and lyrics and deffenetly heard the song before the day. That was important as we couldn't have them turning up on the day not knowing anything they were do let alone not knowing the song. We did this pactice one evening to make sure we were all free at the same time so that we could record it:

As it was quite difficult to get Freddie who is in another house over to our house we asked Oscar (the drummer) to learn his part so that if he had a chance before Monday he could teach it to it which made the process a lot quicker.

Charlie who is our lead singer and Guitarist he had to learn both lyrics and guitar part ready for Mondays shoot. Learn the lyrics wasnt that difficult for him as we had to cut down the song any way from 5 minutes to 3 minutes which meant charlie didn't have so much to lear and could consantrate mroe on the guitar part. He took away the chords and came to the shoot on Monday ready to get on and shoot.

Oscar worked on the drum part for the video and found it easy to learn and we were pleased with how well he got into his part.

Narrtive practise

As our narrative element of our music video was very intense we decided that we need to get the two main characters Connor and Peter together to have a practise so they didn't get embarrassed or awkwardness; that may happen on the day. We needed them to get it all out before the shoot so we could get on the shoot as quickly as we could. So we did it in a room with just those two and Me and Fergus and we just practised doing compressions so that Connor wouldn't hurt Pete.

Videos that worried us about our idea

This was a video by radiohead called Just that we looked at on youtube that worried us as it had a very similer concepts to our first idea. After looking at it and going away and adding some different elements to our video we felt a lot mroe possitive and felt we could pull of our new idea.



Too double check that there were no other videos similer to our idea we googled 'ambulance music video' to see what else had been done. First oen we found was this:

Then came across this country track which had a slight comdy factor to it:

and then this one by Nikelback

We knew that nothing would be completely original that we came up with but it was mroe the way we executed our idea that will make it a sucess and give it its unique identity.

Quote from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1996):  “Creativity results from the interaction of a system composed of three elements:  a culture that contains symbolic rules, a person who brings novelty into the symbolic domain, and a field of experts who recognize and validate the innovation.”

Other quotes on creativity:

"The making of the new and the re arranging of the old" (Bentley 1997)

"A process needed for problem solving...not a special gift enjoyed by a few but a common ability possessed by most people" (Jones 1993)

Final Decision on Location

 Guildford car park was our final attement at trying to get a public place to shoot at, after trying so many times to ring up south west trains for permission to shoot at Horsley station we decided that it would be a safer opposition to use the contacts the school had and asked permission from Guildford bough counsel to shoot in Guildford station car park, we got the all clear for shooting on Monday 7th November. This is a perfect location and it meant we could have public reactions watching this scene unfold. We could use huge amounts of space and set the scene perfectly in this quite car park in the early evening.

We felt a lot better now that we had finally sorted out the off campus location. Guildford is a perfect location as it only takes half an hour from school to get to and it meant that our cast could get home easily as it was close for them as well so it was very convenient.

Extra props and cast

Cast List

A2’s	AS’s
Charlie Lindsay – Lead Vocalist Oscar Jackson – Drummer Connor Vickery – Performing CPR Rose Salvage – Passer by Charlie Manton – Passer by	Freddie Dixon – Bassist Peter Bergin – Collapsed guy Henry Hammond – Passer by

As a few cast members we had origanally decided to use were busy or had other priorities, we decided to use Charlie Lindsay as both the Lead Vocalist and Guitarist. This would make it easy to contorl as well only have a three man band.  

Props List

School will provide:	We will provide:
Fake Blood Blue flashing light (ambulance) Paramedic Outfit: fluorescent jacket, green trousers and green shirt Mic Mic stand Electric Guitar Bass Guitar Business Suit - Phil	Bag of shopping (things that can roll and be visually interesting) – can of baked beans, oranges etc. Drum kit – Oscar Jackson

 

Due to the fact that an ambulance would be too difficult to source, we have decided to just get a blue flashing LED light. We have looked on amazon at possible blue lights that we could buy cheaply.

Letter to recording company

We sent a letter to the record label that released Our bands song ‘Climbing up the Walls’ in order to ask their permission to use their song in our video and to confirm that we can go ahead.

To Parlophone Records,

We are a group of A Level students working on an A Level project for a qualification in Media Studies. We are writing to request permission to use the following track as part of this project:

Radiohead, Climbing up the Walls (Ok Computer)

With your permission the track would be used as the accompaniment to a short form video that is made purely for assessment purpose and will have no commercial usage. The video will be viewed only by members of the school community and the assessor of the examination board.

The artists and the copyright holder will of course be fully recognised in the pre-production and evaluation materials that accompanies the project. We can also include a full copyright notice if required both in the planning material and on the video itself.

Yours Sincerely,

Fergus Brown, Imogen Holmes and Laura Cheese

Hurtwood House School